The shotgun marriage that is Jarome Luai’s shift to Parramatta to form a halves pairing with Mitchell Moses that could be anything, wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card when the teams last faced off in a grand final.

“You can call us daddy,” the then Penrith five-eighth quipped during the grand final week of 2022, when asked which western Sydney club held the title of big brother.

Four years is a long time in rugby league, but so too was Tuesday of this week. It began with news that Parramatta was interested in Melbourne’s Jack Howarth, shifted to Tigers coach Benji Marshall’s explanation for showing his co-captain the door early - “rumours that we’re having a relationship breakdown or a rift between our friendship is absolutely bulls---” - and then evolved after the Eels had secured the services of Luai on a one-year deal.

There is much to unpack. Within three years, Luai will have played for three NRL clubs having earlier this year signed with the PNG Chiefs for three seasons from 2028. Given where they are situated, Parramatta felt they needed to be one of them. Come next year, their coach, Jason Ryles, will be into the third year of a three-season contract. Ryles has two promising young halves, Lincoln Fletcher and Lorenzo Talataina, who want to see a pathway to the NRL. So Ryles needs to find the balance between waiting for the pair to develop, while winning enough games of football.

Which is why he signed a four-time premiership winner who gives the club a potentially potent halves pairing. Luai and Moses have combined three times for NSW at State of Origin level and won all three matches, including the 2024 decider at Suncorp Stadium. The hope is they can again click at club level.

When it comes to stop-gap options, however, there is a cautionary tale. The Eels tried something similar with former Melbourne half Jonah Pezet, picking him up for this season before he heads to Brisbane. For various reasons, it hasn’t worked.

Harsher critics may say the same thing about Luai’s stint at Wests Tigers. It was meant to be a transformational signing, one that led to the end of a finals drought stretching back to 2011. It’s highly unlikely that will happen during his tenure.

When Luai arrived at Concord, on a five-year contract riddled with get-out clauses in his favour, everything was done to ensure he didn’t activate them. But after Luai’s decision to join PNG, his and the team’s performances, in Marshall’s words, had “fallen off the cliff”.

After just 18 months, the narrative had changed from fearing Luai would leave, to paying $500,000 freight to get him off the books a season early.

“Times change. When he made the decision, we didn’t have time to process what had happened; it happened so fast,” Marshall said on Tuesday.

“From a club perspective, when we started thinking about it and realising that we’ve got kids coming through in the same positions - from a long-term view, if we hold a couple of those kids back another 12 months, we might lose those kids. Okay? So, this decision was what was made in the best interest of the club. And if anyone’s having a go at us for that, well, unlucky.”

The $700,000 the Tigers have freed up in their salary cap is slated to go towards the retention of Samuela Fainu and his brother Latu. Another sibling, Sione, recently re-signed and, to further sweeten the deal, the club is also considering throwing a lifeline to Manase Fainu, who will be released from prison in October. Fainu is eligible for parole in October after being jailed for the stabbing of a Mormon youth leader at a church dance in Sydney’s south-west in 2019. The former Manly hooker has been incarcerated since December 2022 and has not played in the NRL since he made a semi-final appearance for the Sea Eagles in 2019.

The release of Luai puts the Fainu family in a strong position at the bargaining table.

While he wasn’t the organising halfback they’d hoped they had bought, Luai has made the Tigers a better place. The Samoan international has improved the culture, lifted training standards and helped attract players.

“The thing I will say about Jarome - and I said this when he signed with PNG - is that we can never repay him for what he’s done for this club,” said Marshall, who took umbrage at suggestions of a fallout between them.

“What people probably don’t see is what he does in the locker room, what he’s done for our culture, how he’s shaped the way the players train, and how he has given us a level of professionalism.”

When he signed with the Tigers, Luai was expected to be the man. That won’t be the case at Parramatta. Moses will run the show and the pair will add experience to a starting spine that, last week against the Roosters, had only a combined 124 games of first-grade experience.

The Eels hope the addition of Luai, Jaydn Su’A from the Dragons, potentially Howarth and a front-rower for 2027 will give their squad a very different look.

Regardless, a turnaround is only possible if Luai considers his Parramatta teammates as his brothers rather than sons.